


If I Could Just See You Smile

by flipflop_diva



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Awesome Sam Wilson, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve is seriously injured in a mission gone wrong, it's not easy for anyone on the team. But Sam knows it's hardest on one person in particular. Now he just needs to find her to make sure she's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Could Just See You Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Written for zippitgood's prompt _i want your devotion to this / can we kiss like we do in my head / can we dance like we do on my bed / like we're still young / love is a loss that we incur / when we gamble with the world_ as part of the Hurt/Comfort Lightning Round at [Tower Party](http://towerparty.livejournal.com).

Guilt hung heavily in the air around them. Guilt and fear and uncertainty. Four heads looked up at the soft click of the door handle being turned, four people scampered to their feet, four sets of eyes flickered with a whisp of hope.

A whisp of hope that died at the slow shake of Maria’s head and the softness in her eyes.

_No change._

Wanda, Vision and Rhodey sunk back into the couch cushions, as if they could no longer bear to stand. No one said a word, but they didn’t have to; it was there in the silence between them.

_If only …_

If only one of them had grabbed Steve before the explosion, if only Wanda had sensed the man before the bomb went off, if only they had found Steve sooner ….

If only, if only, if only …

“They’re doing everything they can,” Maria said. She didn’t say the doctors were hopeful or that he should wake any moment. She didn’t even say the serum was doing what it was supposed to do.

Speaking words aloud wouldn’t make them any more true, and they all knew that. Instead Maria exited the way she came, silently and quickly, until it was just the four of them again. Waiting. Hoping. 

Sam sunk down into the chair across from the others. He was hoping their other teammate would finally show up, but he knew in his heart she wouldn’t. She was too shaken, too on edge. None of them had missed the way she looked at Steve when she thought no one was watching. They all knew her secret, but they also all knew she’d never admit it out loud before she was ready.

So they sat there and waited, and hoped, and worried, because right then, it was all they could do.

•••

She slunk into Steve’s room at the darkest hour of the night, long after everyone else had disappeared off to sleep. There were no around-the-clock nurses and doctors here in the bunker, just alarms that would alert anyone who needed to know if anything changed. The next scheduled visit from the doctor wasn’t for another few hours.

She was so focused on Steve she didn’t notice Sam sitting silently on a chair in the corner until it was too late. She was halfway to the bed when she must have heard him breathing or somehow sensed his presence.

She stopped almost instantly, her body rigid, her breath shallow.

Sam almost laughed, because he didn’t think he had ever seen Natasha surprised by anything before, but there was nothing funny about the look on her face when he caught a glimpse of it by the pale light of the moon shining through the window. Her eyes were wide and she looked exhausted. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said she also looked like she’d been crying. 

The entire left side of her face was bruised and swollen, and he could see bandages poking out from under the collar and the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She had been standing with Steve when the warning cry had come from Vision. Steve had reacted immediately, hitting her as hard as he could, with his shield, sending her flying like she was nothing more than a feather. They’d found her, twenty minutes after they’d gotten Steve out of there, unconscious and buried under the rubble, scratched and bruised and with a broken rib or two, but at least she was alive. Steve had succeeded in pushing her out of the range of the explosion as best as he could.

Now, Natasha stood between the door and Steve’s hospital bed, staring wide-eyed at Sam like a deer caught in headlights for what felt like an eternity. Sam was afraid to say a word, for fear of making her bolt, but he was afraid to not say anything for fear of the same.

Finally he took a risk. 

“They said nothing’s really changed,” he said softly. There was a beat before Natasha nodded — Sam had a feeling she had already known that — but he saw her shoulders relax just a notch.

He shifted positions and patted the chair next to him. “Do you want to sit?”

He saw her glance at Steve, at the bed, and he realized she was probably intending to slide in beside him before Sam caught her. He felt a little guilty to have interrupted her plan, but the relief he felt outweighed the guilt as she nodded again and moved toward him.

She perched on the edge of the chair, back straight, her hands clasped in her lap. She watched Steve, and Sam watched her. Part of him wanted to reach over and take her hand, but he didn’t dare. One thing he’d learned for sure in the two years since he met her was that she would let him know when she was at least okay with someone helping her.

The whole scene reminded him eerily of another time, back when his friendship with Steve was still brand new and Natasha was still a mystery. It was a bustling metropolitan hospital back then, not a medical ward in a secret base, and the amount of doctors and nurses and guards had almost been overwhelming.

Sam had stayed by Steve’s side back then as long as anyone would let him, but on each of the three nights before Steve regained consciousness, Natasha would slip inside long after visitors’ hours were over and settle herself on the chair on the other side of the bed. She’d talked on those nights, made jokes, tried to convince Sam to convince Steve to go out with Sharon the not-nurse who had lived across the hall. But one night, when Sam had fallen asleep, worn out from his bedside vigil, he had awoken to find Natasha holding Steve’s hand, her chin on his chest, talking to him so softly Sam couldn’t hear what she was saying.

But that was all it had taken for Sam to be sure of one thing. The feeling he had gotten when he’d walked into his guest bedroom just a couple days before to find the two of them together hadn’t been wrong. She cared about Steve much more than she was willing to say.

Sam was pretty sure what she felt for Steve was the reason she was even still here, at the bunker, leading the Avengers. Steve always refuted it on the few instances Sam brought it up — he’d point to the dates she still liked to try to insist he go on or the way she flirted with Bruce until he had disappeared or the way she reverted back to treating him as a captain and nothing else — but Sam knew better. He saw the way she watched him and the way she always sought him out when she needed something. He saw the way she laughed when she was with him and the way she smiled. And Sam knew just enough about her past to know that, to Natasha, loving someone was probably as scary as the threat of another Chitauri invasion was to anyone else.

Besides, he could see her right now, sitting beside Sam, staring at Steve as if the force of her eyes alone could bring him back to her.

She was quiet and still for so long, Sam was beginning to think that was just how it was going to be for the night, and he was okay with that. At least she wasn’t hiding. At least she was still here.

It took him a few seconds to realize she had dropped her head and was staring at her hands. It took him even longer to realize she was trembling. And it wasn’t until her breath hitched, minutes after he noticed her hands shaking, that he realized she was crying.

That was definitely something he wasn’t prepared for. In the two years since he’d met her, they had been in all sorts of awkward and uncomfortable and horrible situations, but not once had he seen her cry.

He decided to take that as a sign that she was asking for him to help her. He slid to the side of his chair and very carefully slipped an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t resist, willingly leaning into him until her head was against his chest. He ran his fingers up and down her arm. 

Her tears were silent but he could feel her still trembling slightly beneath his touch. He used his other hand to run his fingers through her hair.

“It’s okay, Nat,” he whispered to the top of her bent head. “Steve’s strong. If anyone can survive this, he can.”

She shifted then, sat partly back up so she could look at him. Her eyelashes were damp, and her face looked even more swollen than it had when she’d walked in.

She was quiet when she spoke, as though she thought maybe Steve could hear her. “It’s all my fault.”

Sam frowned. He hadn’t expected that. He’d thought maybe she’d tell him he was a bad liar or apologize for letting him see her this way or … well, anything. But not that, not a whispered confession after which she lowered her eyes, as though she were ashamed.

“What’s all your fault? What happened to Steve was an accident. You know that.”

Natasha shook her head just barely. Enough to make a few strands of curls bounce but nothing more. “I distracted him,” she said. “Before it happened. I was trying to convince him he should go out with Maria, and he was upset with him. He wanted to focus and I kept telling him I could multi-task …”

She trailed off. Sam tightened his fingers around her arm. “It’s not your fault,” he told her gently. “Everyone jokes around on missions. It’s what we do. It’s not your fault.”

“If I hadn’t been with him …”

“Natasha …” Sam wanted to tell her not to do this, not to focus on the what ifs, not to add this to the list of wrongs he knew she always kept track of in her head, but the words died on his lips before he could utter them. She was blinking at him in the dark, her eyes still glassy from her tears, but her mouth had curved up just a touch.

“I think he thinks I hate him,” she said, and she smiled wider until she laughed, but it was the saddest laugh Sam had ever heard, and it felt like his heart could break just by hearing it. He slid his arms back around her and pulled her back against him.

“No,” he told her softly. “He knows you don’t. And when he wakes up, you can tell him the truth.”

He felt her let out a puff of warm air against his chest. She was quiet for a second, and then she laughed again, less sad this time but still full of so much regret. “You’re as bad a liar as he is, Wilson,” she murmured. “I’m going to tell him that if he ever wakes up.”

“You do that,” Sam said. “As soon as you tell him you love him and that I, Sam, had it right all along.”

She lifted her head to frown up at him. “That seems like an unfair agreement.”

“I think it’s more than fair,” Sam said. He wanted to tell her that Steve had told him once that he loved her, too, but he didn’t. Knowing Natasha, she probably already suspected, but confirming the truth wasn’t going to make things better if the man in question never woke up again.

Natasha fell asleep in Sam’s arms soon after, and Sam held her against him for a long while, wishing things could be different. The sun was about to rise and he knew the doctors would be coming soon.

Sam slid to his feet, trying not to disturb the redheaded angel asleep against his chest. Very carefully, he made his way over to Steve’s bed, where the supersoldier remained pale and still. He tucked Natasha under Steve’s arm as best as he could, without jiggling any IVs or sounding any alarms. She blinked sleepily at him as he brushed a dried tear from her cheek and covered her up with a blanket, but he just smiled at her as he turned to head out of the room, to go meet the doctors and Maria and ask them to give Natasha some time. 

He was just closing the door behind him when he heard it, a very faint whisper. “Please come back to me,” he heard Natasha say, and he caught a last glimpse of her, her arms wrapped around Steve as she peered up into his sleeping face. “I can’t lose you.”

Sam closed the door behind him, unwilling to intrude on her any more. As he headed down the hall to meet the doctors, he hoped more than anything that Natasha got her wish.


End file.
